Pop once wore expensive suits, drove Corvette

The notion of Gregg Popovich as some sort of suave, globe-trotting spy, a la James Bond, is one of the more amusing tropes surrounding the Spurs’ curmudgeonly head coach. After all, he speaks Russian fluently, and served time in the U.S. Air Force in eastern Europe.

Turns out there is at least a morsel of truth to the rumors. At least in Popovich’s youth mind, according to a recent profile by Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News.

As we learned in a recent excerpt from his senior yearbook, Popovich was dead serious even back then. But when assigned to what one of those three friends, Joe Kreimborg, referred to as “Air Force spy school,” Pop — or “Popo,” as he was known at the academy — did his best to look the part.

“He drove his Corvette and wore a $300 suit to his first assignment,” Kreimborg said. “He walked into the office, and they said, ‘You need to go to Sears to buy a suit, and you’d probably be better off driving a Corvair.’”